'tis one thing to be tempted, escalus,
another thing to fall.
one of the peculiarities of africa yet to be explained is the almost supernatural rapidity with which rumour travels. across the whole breadth of this darkest continent a mere bit of gossip has made its way in a month. a man may divulge a secret, say, at st. paul de loanda, take ship to zanzibar, and there his own secret will be told to him.
rumour met maurice gordon almost at the outset of his journey northward.
“small-pox is raging on the ogowe river,” they told him. “the english expedition is stricken down with it. the three leaders are dead.”
maurice gordon had not lived four years on the west african coast in vain. he took this for what it was worth. but if he had acquired scepticism, he had lost his nerve. he put about and sailed back to loango.
“i wonder,” he muttered, as he walked up from the beach to his office that same afternoon—“i wonder if durnovo is among them?”
and he was conscious of a ray of hope in his mind. he was a kind-hearted man, in his way, this maurice gordon of loango; but he could not disguise from himself the simple fact that the death of victor durnovo would be a distinct convenience and a most desirable relief. even the best of us—that is to say, the present writer and his reader—have these inconvenient little feelings. there are people who have done us no particular injury, to whom we wish no particular harm, but we feel that it would be very expedient and considerate of them to die.
thinking these thoughts, maurice gordon arrived at the factory and went straight to his own office, where he found the object of them—victor durnovo—sitting in consumption of the office sherry.
gordon saw at once that the rumour was true. there was a hunted unwholesome look in durnovo's eyes. he looked shaken, and failed to convey a suggestion of personal dignity.
“hulloa!” exclaimed the proprietor of the decanter. “you look a bit chippy. i have been told there is small-pox up at msala.”
“so have i. i've just heard it from meredith.”
“just heard it—is meredith down here too?”
“yes, and the fool wants to go back to-night. i have to meet him on the beach at four o'clock.”
maurice gordon sat down, poured out for himself a glass of sherry, and drank it thoughtfully.
“do you know, durnovo,” he said emphatically, “i have my doubts about meredith being a fool.”
“indeed!” with a derisive laugh.
“yes.”
maurice gordon looked over his shoulder to see that the door was shut.
“you'll have to be very careful,” he said. “the least slip might let it all out. meredith has a quiet way of looking at one which disquiets me. he might find out.”
“not he,” replied durnovo confidently, “especially if we succeed; and we shall succeed—by god we shall!”
maurice gordon made a little movement of the shoulders, as indicating a certain uneasiness, but he said nothing.
there was a pause of considerable duration, at the end of which durnovo produced a paper from his pocket and threw it down.
“that's good business,” he said.
“two thousand tusks,” murmured maurice gordon. “yes, that's good. through akmed, i suppose?”
“yes. we can outdo these arabs at their own trade.”
an evil smile lighted up durnovo's sallow face. when he smiled, his dropping, curtain-like moustache projected in a way that made keen observers of the human face wonder what his mouth was like.
gordon, who had been handling the paper with the tips of his finger, as if it were something unclean, threw it down on the table again.
“ye—es,” he said slowly; “but it does not seem to dirty black hands as it does white. they know no better.”
“lord!” ejaculated durnovo. “don't let us begin the old arguments all over again. i thought we settled that the trade was there; we couldn't prevent it, and therefore the best thing is to make hay while the sun shines, and then clear out of the country.”
“but suppose meredith finds out?” reiterated maurice gordon, with a lamentable hesitation that precedes loss.
“if meredith finds out, it will be the worse for him.”
a certain concentration of tone aroused maurice gordon's attention, and he glanced uneasily at his companion.
“no one knows what goes on in the heart of africa,” said durnovo darkly. “but we will not trouble about that; meredith won't find out.”
“where is he now?”
“with your sister, at the bungalow. a lady's man—that is what he is.”
victor durnovo was smarting under a sense of injury which was annoyingly indefinite. it was true that jack meredith had come at a very unpropitious moment; but it was equally clear that the intrusion could only have been the result of accident. it was really a case of the third person who is no company, with aggravated symptoms. durnovo had vaguely felt in the presence of either a subtle possibility of sympathy between jocelyn gordon and jack meredith. when he saw them together, for only a few minutes as it happened, the sympathy rose up and buffeted him in the face, and he hated jack meredith for it. he hated him for a certain reposeful sense of capability which he had at first set down as conceit, and later on had learnt to value as something innate in blood and education which was not conceit. he hated him because his gentlemanliness was so obvious that it showed up the flaws in other men, as the masterpiece upon the wall shows up the weaknesses of the surrounding pictures. but most of all he hated him because jocelyn gordon seemed to have something in common with the son of sir john meredith—a world above the head of even the most successful trader on the coast—a world in which he, victor durnovo, could never live and move at ease.
beyond this, victor durnovo cherished the hatred of the found out. he felt instinctively that behind the courteous demeanour of jack meredith there was an opinion—a cool, unbiassed criticism—of himself, which meredith had no intention of divulging.
on hearing that jack was at the bungalow with jocelyn, maurice gordon glanced at the clock and wondered how he could get away from his present visitor. the atmosphere of jack meredith's presence was preferable to that diffused by victor durnovo. there was a feeling of personal safety and dignity in the very sound of his voice which set a weak and easily-led man upon his feet.
but victor durnovo had something to say to gordon which circumstances had brought to a crisis.
“look here,” he said, leaning forward and throwing away the cigarette he had been smoking. “this simiacine scheme is going to be the biggest thing that has ever been run on this coast.”
“yes,” said gordon, with the indifference that comes from non-participation.
“and i'm the only business man in it,” significantly.
gordon nodded his head, awaiting further developments.
“which means that i could work another man into it. i might find out that we could not get on without him.”
the black eyes seemed to probe the good-natured, sensual face of maurice gordon, so keen, so searching was their glance.
“and i would be willing to do it—to make that man's fortune—provided—that he was—my brother-in-law.”
“what the devil do you mean?” asked gordon, setting down the glass that was half raised to his lips.
“i mean that i want to marry—jocelyn.”
and the modern school of realistic, mawkishly foul novelists, who hold that love excuseth all, would have taken delight in the passionate rendering of the girl's name.
“want to marry jocelyn, do you?” answered maurice, with a derisive little laugh. on the first impulse of the moment he gave no thought to himself or his own interests, and spoke with undisguised contempt. he might have been speaking to a beggar on the roadside.
durnovo's eyes flashed dangerously, and his tobacco-stained teeth clenched for a moment over his lower lip.
“that is my desire—and intention.”
“look here, durnovo!” exclaimed gordon. “don't be a fool! can't you see that it is quite out of the question?”
he attempted weakly to dismiss the matter by leaning forward on his writing-table, taking up his pen, and busying himself with a number of papers.
victor durnovo rose from his chair so hastily that in a flash maurice gordon's hand was in the top right-hand drawer of his writing-table. the good-natured blue eyes suddenly became fixed and steady. but durnovo seemed to make an effort over himself, and walked to the window, where he drew aside the woven-grass blind and looked out into the glaring sunlight. still standing there, he turned and spoke in a low, concentrated voice:
“no,” he said, “i can't see that it is out of the question. on the contrary, it seems only natural that she should marry the man who is her brother's partner in many a little—speculation.”
maurice gordon, sitting there, staring hopelessly into the half-breed's yellow face, saw it all. he went back in a flash of recollection to many passing details which had been unnoted at the time—details which now fitted into each other like the links of a chain—and that chain was around him. he leapt forward in a momentary opening of the future, and saw himself ruined, disgraced, held up to the execration of the whole civilised world. he was utterly in this man's power—bound hand and foot. he could not say him no. and least of all could he say no to this demand, which had roused all the latent chivalry, gentlemanliness, brotherly love, that was in him. maurice gordon knew that victor durnovo possessed knowledge which jocelyn would consider cheap at the price of her person.
there was one way out of it. his hand was still on the handle of the top right-hand drawer. he was a dead shot. his finger was within two inches of the stock of a revolver. one bullet for victor durnovo, another for himself. then the old training of his school days—the training that makes an upright, honest gentleman—asserted itself, and he saw the cowardice of it. there was time enough for that later, when the crisis came. in the meantime, if the worst came to the worst, he could fight to the end.
“i don't think,” said durnovo, who seemed to be following gordon's thoughts, “that the idea would be so repellent to your sister as you seem to think.”
and a sudden ray of hope shot athwart the future into which his listener was staring. it might be so. one can never tell with women. maurice gordon had had considerable experience of the world, and, after all, he was only building up hope upon precedent. he knew, as well as you or i, that women will dance and flirt with—even marry—men who are not gentlemen. not only for the moment, but as a permanency, something seems to kill their perception of a fact which is patent to every educated man in the room; and one never knows what it is. one can only surmise that it is that thirst for admiration which does more harm in the world than the thirst for alcoholic stimulant which we fight with societies and guilds, oaths and little snips of ribbon.
“the idea never entered my head,” said gordon.
“it has never been out of mine,” replied durnovo, with a little harsh laugh which was almost pathetic. “i don't want you to do anything now,” he went on more gently. it was wonderful how well he knew maurice gordon. the suggested delay appealed to one side of his nature, the softened tone to another. “there is time enough. when i come back i will speak of it again.”
“you have not spoken to her?”
“no, i have not spoken to her.”
maurice gordon shook his head.
“she is a queer girl,” he said, trying to conceal the hope that was in his voice. “she is cleverer than me, you know, and all that. my influence is very small, and would scarcely be considered.
“but your interests would,” suggested durnovo. “your sister is very fond of you, and—i think i have one or two arguments to put forward which she would recognise as uncommonly strong.”
the colour which had been returning slowly to maurice gordon's face now faded away again. his lips were dry and shrivelled as if he had passed through a sirocco.
“mind,” continued durnovo reassuringly, “i don't say i would use them unless i suspected that you were acting in opposition to my wishes.”
gordon said nothing. his heart was throbbing uncomfortably—it seemed to be in his throat.
“i would not bring forward those arguments except as a last resource,” went on victor durnovo, with the deliberate cruelty of a tyrant. “i would first point out the advantages; a fourth share in the simiacine scheme would make you a rich man—above suspicion—independent of the gossip of the market-place.”
maurice gordon winced visibly, and his eyes wavered as if he were about to give way to panic.
“you could retire and go home to england—to a cooler climate. this country might get too hot for your constitution—see?”
durnovo came back into the centre of the room and stood by the writing-table. his attitude was that of a man holding a whip over a cowering dog.
he took up his hat and riding-whip with a satisfied little laugh, as if the dog had cringingly done his bidding.
“besides,” he said, with a certain defiance of manner, “i may succeed without any of that—eh?”
“yes,” gordon was obliged to admit with a gulp, as if he were swallowing his pride, and he knew that in saying the word he was degrading his sister—throwing her at this man's feet as the price of his honour.
with a half-contemptuous nod victor durnovo turned, and went away to keep his appointment with meredith.
